Minor Euthanized in Belgium

A Belgian MD filled a syringe with heart-stopping poison, and injected the fluid into the arm of a dying child who had asked to die, causing death. And it was all legal. From a Belgian newspaper’s story (Google translation)

The doctor who performed the euthanasia has this week delivered a dossier to the Federal Control and Evaluation Euthanasia. This is confirmed by, among others, Professor Wim Distelmans, chairman of the committee. It is a Dutch case, suggesting that euthanasia is carried out in Flanders.

(Update:Another report says the ill minor was 17. I am not sure why a Dutch child was euthanized in Belgium because he or she could have been legally euthanized for children aged 12 and up.)

Ultimately this is a triumph for out-and-out nihilism, not just Belgium’s inventive euthanasia lobby. Nihilism is a philosophical fad which seems to catching on. Below we feature a report on three American bioethicists who argue the case for population control to fight climate change and a defense of infanticide by a Finnish bioethicist.

I’ve also just discovered a new book by South African philosopher David Benatar. In it he argues that procreation is morally wrong because life’s a bitch and then you die (I am over-simplifying, of course.) He concludes his book with these cheerful thoughts:

“Every birth is a future death. Between the birth and the death there is bound to be plenty of unpleasantness … Inflicting serious harm—or even the risk of it—on one person, without his or her consent, in order to benefit others, is presumptively wrong.”

If I’m right, euthanizing a child is not an terminus for Belgian euthanasia, but just a bus stop en route to pure nihilism. What its supporters are trying to eliminate is not just pain, but life itself.

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